Wednesday, February 1, 2012

January 16, 2012

Ola,

So I'm in Juazeiro, Bahia. It is about 8 or 10 hours away from Salvador. It is burning hot here but I'm loving it. It is more of a dry, plain like atmosphere. But the really cool thing about Juazeiro is that it is on the border of Bahia and there is a huge river that separates Pernambuco with Bahia so I will take so way cool pictures there. But my companion is Elder de Araújo who is Brasilian from Minas Gerais like Elder L. Santos. All they talk about is, "Pão de Queijo," (cheese bread) which is really famous there in Minas. He is gonna teach me how to make it so i will come home with at least one recipe ha. Some cool stuff about Minas is that Pelê is from Minas Gerais, the worlds best soccer player of all time. Also Paulo Fernandes who is a singer. It is way cool to hear the different accents that all the Brazilians have. One thing that Elder de Araújo says that they say in Minas is, "Trem." When you are telling somebody to look at something that you don´t know what exactly what is is for example, " look at that THING." I learned to say the word that means, business and in Minas when they are talking they say the word, train. So I'm walking around here talking to people saying, "where is that business?" and my companion, "where is that train?" Brasil is full of cute little things like that ha. Elder de Araújo has been out for 1 year and 5 months. He was the secretary when I got to the mission and so I had already heard about him and talked to him a little bit. He is really cool i like him a lot. He worked as a musician before the mission and he taught himself how to play the piano. He is an incredible singer and i will send some videos to you guys how well he sings. It really is amazing. After we cleaned the church, Elder de Araújo went to the piano and it was crazy. He can hear a song and play it in that very minute. Or you tell him to play a song and he plays it with ease. It is way sick!!! I am way excited to see him sing in Sacrament meeting. Here in Juazeiro, I´ve had the strangest feelings about the people here. | feel like I've met them all before. All the members that we speak to I get little clips in my mind about them and I feel like I know them. And I shared that feeling with my companion and he said something really simple but really made sense and I felt something when he told me. He simply said, "because you knew them in the pre-existence."I do know these people and I have known them from since our Heavenly father taught us all at his knee. I can feel a love for this people and a desire to work hard, love and joke with them, and help them repent and us all to come a little closer to our Heavenly Home.